Will you be able to afford your taxes in April?

Just curious to see how many people are worried about tax season since the law changed, and the majority of employers didn't follow it correctly. I won't be hit nearly as hard as a single person, but a lot of married middle class people with kids are owing thousands of dollars this year. I've never owed ever in my life until this year, and that seems to be the trend. People on Facebook and Twitter are using the hashtag #TaxScam to vent their frustration. This is effecting those who itemized the most (which, thankfully, I've never done since my accountant mother advised me to not do so because it would've lowered my refund in previous years). It's estimated 30 million taxpayers will owe this year and, therefore, will not receive a refund.

The thing is that, apparently, if you do the math, everyone did actually pay less in taxes. The problem was the law muddled how taxpayers are supposed to withhold their money, and a lot of companies did not follow the law correctly. That, and most taxpayers didn't bother to look at their paycheck to see if their withholdings were more or less than previous years. But most Americans do not have the income to pay back the taxes in one lump sum or if they do, it'll be a huge hit to their savings.

Long story short: Even if you changed nothing, most people are going to end up owing the government this year instead of getting a refund. Those most likely to be safe are those who worked under a new employer for the first time last year. But if you haven't changed any of your tax information since you were hired then it sucks to be you.

Most Helpful Guys

What are you talkin about most employers just withhold the maximum. So most people are getting a refund like always. Because guess what it was a tax cut for everyone in the middle class.

Really the main things that were change was the standard deduction was doubled and the salt deduction was cap to $10,000 and the child tax credit to qualify was raised to like $150k.

With this pretty much everyone who's not in high-tax states are paying less in taxes. But if you're a high earner in a high tax state thanks to the new salt deduction rule you're actually paying more taxes. But This only affects a very small minority of people. Even in high stack States like California you have to be making over $150k a year before you're paying more in taxes under the new bill. And if you're not in a high tax state it's even higher so the fact is this was a tax cut for pretty much everyone who are paying taxes.

The problem is it's about half of Americans don't even pay taxes so course you're going to get many people not understanding what's going on

The biggest change happened last year, when itemizing no longer did me a lick of good. Used to be I got quite a bit back (for a single man, anyway) due to mileage, nights away from home for work, that kind of thing. Last year, I couldn't do any of it any more. So all that money that. gov stole from me so they could buy the votes of the parasites with a bunch of feral children, it's just gone. I got almost nothing back.

This year will probably be the same, though I *think* I made less in 2018 than I did in 2017, so maybe I'll get a tiny break.

What Girls & Guys Said

I don't live in the US, but I'm ready for the taxes this June. I also have the luck of having a girlfriend who works for the tax agency (ex Equitalia, now Agenzia Entrate e Riscossione) which is the Italian equivalent of your IRS, so she'll help fill my forms in such a way to pay less and get some refund.